Friday, February 7, 2014

Not Lazy : Using Your Planner To Overcome Roadblocks

Sometimes, I don't do something just because I am lazy.

That long pause was just to give that statement time to sink in. :)

Sometimes, I am lazy. I'm not ashamed of it. I'm not too ashamed of it. It took me years to be comfortable with being lazy every now and then. I used to think of laziness as failure. Now, I consider it part of the natural ebb and flow of life. I'm trying to be more Type B than Type A. (It's a work in progress. Also, I can practically hear all my Type B friends laughing out loud at the idea that I might be less Type A lately. They know who they are.)

But every now and then, something isn't getting done and I suspect I am just procrastinating. That is the case with my volunteer work for the kids' school's auction committee. I felt like I just was lazy and not getting it done. But then I tried to get it done, and guess what? I was wrong!

I tried to visit the vendors on my list and figured out that there were two major roadblocks: 1) the vendors were physically not in parts of the city where I generally drive and 2) the businesses were not open at 8 a.m., the time I get to the city. I realized that I kept trying to get the visits done, but I was not getting it done because of timing and physical location. Basically, to get the visits done, I would have to take a special trip into the city.So I revised my plan for getting the auction solicitations done. I spent a few minutes with Google, and wrote down the address and open hours of each business. (Note that once I knew the locations and times, I numbered the businesses in the most efficient order for visiting them. That way, I don't need to think about where to go next.)

I also checked my calendar and found out that, on Friday, I would be in the city most of the day anyway, because of a midday appointment. So I scheduled the visits on Friday.

Hopefully, this will work. Yes, doing research to prep for a project is quite Type A of me. But, hopefully, it will make the actual task relaxing and more Type B. I'm pretty lazy, after all, and now I just have to follow a checklist instead of thinking. Lazy wins!